Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Church goes Bon(g)kers

The Church of England is striving as ever to be recognised as a relevant part of our cultural landscape. What better way to get involved with some half cooked publicity stunt on behalf of the UN. It has announced that it is encouraging all parishes with a peal of bells to get with the project and fire of a few changes in favour of biodiversity.

The crisis of faith - forget about it. Crass intolerance of diversity of belief in the General Synod. Nothing to see.

Don't the idiots who run these things see that this will merely be seen as bandwagon jumping. Don't they realise that they are there to minister to our spiritual need? It is not as if there aren't plenty of organisations who are doing the work of highlighting the plight of life on earth.

No they don't instead they go on like this,

"David Shreeve, the Church of England’s national environment adviser said: “AsChristians we believe it is important to care for God’s creation and our natural world is suffering because of our own actions. Many of our estimated 10,000 churchyards are full with often rare biodiversity and others in towns and cities support fewer, but equally important wildlife. The church is providing protected havens right on our own doorstep.”

Hold on a minute here, apart from the obvious fact that pealing away at between 12 and 2 will no doubt disturb any number of bats in their belfries, which will, naturally be in breach of some regulation or other (specifically The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 - based upon EU regulation 1992 the European Union's Council Directive on The Conservation of Natural Habitats of Wild Fauna and Flora (better known as the Habitats Directive)) Love that website, it tells me how to report a bat crime, (no doubt by using the bat phone or by going to the police in the bat copter).

What the hell is the Church of England doing with a 'national Environmental advisor'? They are broke for Pete's sake. Parishes up and down the country are being squeezed and most these days do not even have a limpid curate (male or female) to complain about over the scones.

I don't recall, which of the apostles was designated the Apostle for small furry animals - was it Luke, or Timothy?

I suppose we could make St Swithun the patron Saint of Climate change?